Ada Alice Cunnick Inchbold

“ It is a dazzling panorama, recalling to those who have seen both the City of the Golden Horn, which hides close to the water edge when spied from afar, but upon near approach rises with the indolent grace of the Oriental, until all its loveliness of matchless colour, minarets, domes, palaces and cypress trees reveals itself outspread between the blues of sea and sky. The site, colouring and atmosphere of both cities are very similar, but there is one notable distinction. The skyline of the Portuguese capital has few spires or prominent towers to break up the horizontal lines of the buildings. ”

“ Straight as a line the streets run back from the Praça to the heart of the city. Through the streets which cut across them at an equal regularity are seen at both ends bright vistas of sunlit houses in terraces and blocks piled up at every conceivable angle on the steep hill sides and cliffs. The pavements are pleasant to walk upon and pretty to look at, composed as they are of a mosaic of black and grey stones carefully laid down. The value of time in Portugal can be measured by watching the repairing process of a piece of side walk. ”

“ The sites of these delicious oases of greenery and rare colour have been chiefly chosen on the high places of the city, whence the eye can feast on a variety of pictures in which the colours of the massed houses blend into an imitable, delicate harmony, through graduating tones of rose to pale salmon, of buff to cream, of grey to lavender and dazzling white; where the wonderful purity of the atmosphere, the limpid azure, and at times the blue of the Tagus and beckoning hills of Alemtejo on the opposite shore, are a perpetual delight. ”

“ In every direction the electricos penetrate, bearing life into the sleepy suburbs and beyond. Through leafy boulevards, up and down hill, or along the water front, they glide in straight or diagonal lines, now meandering through a tortuous web of narrow streets between high, quaint houses, with painted shutters and balconies, showing a trailing plant, or a parrot cage, or the gay-tinted garments of an inmate's washing; now emerging on a square or rotunda where stands an ancient monastery, or a church, a palace or a theatre, a fountain or an open garden planted out with trees and flower beds ”

“ Nearly every street in Lisbon has a church or two or even more, but in comparison with the number very few have architectural merit. The south wall of the Church of S. Antonio bounds the Largo da Sé on one side while the other, shadowed by a few trees stretches out to an iron railing high above the alley beneath, for the hill drops sharply towards the river, and the top stories of the poverty-stricken tenements opposite are nearly on a level with the Largo.
The Cathedral faces the ascending roadway that opens out upon the square, a tragic souvenir of the disasters of past centuries. ”

“ An old-world, picturesque character these Lisbon roofs possess. They look as if they had been made with old oak tiles that time had first polished, then dimmed with grey, and touched up from a palette of russet browns and olive greens. The general effect imparts a more ancient aspect to the buildings than is warranted by the date of the earthquake.
The Rocio lies almost at our feet. The statue of D. Pedro stands out from this height as the distinguishing feature. The figure is of bronze standing on a half globe at the summit of a high, fluted column of marble. ”

“ Some of the houses standing back on either side of the Avenida are as fine as any in Lisbon, but there is a preponderance of blocks of flats, plain, high buildings, with nothing but their balconies and their setting of clear sunlight to redeem them from sheer ugliness. Right and left of the upper end of the Avenida are new avenues laid out with trees, and showing everywhere the energy of the modern building spirit, which seems to be a strong force not yet duly regulated and controlled in the output of the ambitious projects it set out to accomplish, but giving promise of a splendid future. ”

“ Across the narrow street frowns the gloomy building known as the Aljube, once a possession of a bishop of the historic family of the Castros, used as a prison for ecclesiastics and now serving as a prison for women. A few steps further and a large, irregular building, buff-coloured and with heavily-barred windows in every wing and story, stands out to the right higher up the hill. Though the chief prison of to-day, it is really an old palace of which the picturesque name, Limeiro—Lemon Tree—is still retained. ”

“ A French gardener—certainly an artist too—planned and carried out the scheme of broad avenues, and winding walks, flower parterres, artificial lakes. In spring no lovelier spot is to be seen in Lisbon, and here the Judas trees flourish to perfection in groups, singly or in whole avenues, their beauty of colour in strong relief against the early foliage and evergreen exotics. This tree met with so often in Lisbon bears the name of olaia in Portuguese, and a prettier name in English than Judas is the Love tree. ”

“ The women have as free and graceful a carriage in balancing their huge water-jars sideways on the head as the women of the East. In fact the same love of the Olhos d'aguæ—eyes or springs of water—prevails in this country as in Egypt or Syria, and the old Moorish name for fountain still survives in the pretty word, Chafariz. To watch the unstinting flow of these public springs it might readily be imagined that water in Lisbon is never less plentiful than it is to-day. ”

“ We are told only that Camões went to fight in Africa as a volunteer where before Ceuta he lost his eye. How familiar that maimed, rugged, yet strong, noble physiognomy becomes to the sojourner in Portugal, for in every town, house, almost every cottage one comes across it in some shape or form, as a bust, or in a print, or cast. Wounded, he returned to Lisbon, but slighted, overlooked, he did what all enterprising Portuguese yearned to do in those days, set sail for India, and again became a fighter in an expedition against the King of Cochin China. ”

“ There is certainly a miserable side of Lisbon to be seen in these districts, a shadowy, sad side, where as in some of the slums of Paris and London, policemen only enter in bands and fully armed. They are considered the danger spots of the city. In the labyrinths of narrow streets, secluded courts, in many a mouldering, senile habitation congregate whole families of the lowest types of the population. ”

“ A beautiful garden with straight walks intersecting one another, lined with tall cypress trees, Judas, lilac, rose and acacia trees is this God's Acre of the English colony in Lisbon, and many are the tombs which fill it. ”

“ At every corner these plain, massive buildings arrest the eye, their buff-coloured exteriors declaring them government property. They are not beautiful to look upon, unless one penetrates to their hidden cloisters which always please; the austere side of monasticism reveals itself in their outward construction. What attracts, however, is their atmosphere of history, their survival as records of the varied phases of the past, as reminders of the extreme volte-face made by the Portuguese in affairs political, religious and social. ”

“ Private gardens deck the margin with tall, thick hedges of multi-hued roses. Weeping willows dip their deliciously green streamers to the limpid surface. The Public Gardens border the opposite bank, where avenues of acacias and other flowering trees perfume the whole atmosphere. Everywhere the freshness of the verdure is charming, while the near presence of factory chimneys and buildings is veiled by tall poplars, the leafy ash, mulberry, olive and a host of other trees. ”

“ There are palm trees in groups and single palms, palms from every part of the globe where they grow—Australia, Africa, South America, the Azores, to mention but a few—and fine coco palms from Brazil, their giant columns surmounted by plumed crests of superb grace. The boscage of magnolias, and other flowering trees and shrubs discloses one beauty close upon the other as we wander through the leafy lanes and avenues. We come upon a pretty lake overhung by a weeping willow of wonderful growth. ”

“ Right below the road as we slowly descend are the plain, unmistakable buildings of a large convent with its church. It is that of the Franciscans, serving to-day as a barracks, bordering the greensward and avenues of the Alameda of the Varzea Grande or cultivated plain.
Further away across the river stands out a square tower, and close to it the brown façade of a church, in which an immense rose window is conspicuous from afar. This is the mother church of the district, S. Maria dos Olivaes, built in the twelfth century, upon ruins of a Benedictine monastery of Gothic times. ”

“ Striding away from the edifice behind are the high, grey piles and arches of a noble aqueduct which show through the openings peeps of a little praça filled with trees and flowers, and the datura trees conspicuous with their white, sweet-smelling pendant blossoms. At the end of the garden the aqueduct turns sharply across the street, forming a triumphal arch of the Doric style erected in honour of its founder. Masses of ivy cover the piers as they pass from sight behind the houses. ”

“ The roads, on the other hand, are badly laid with cobble stones unevenly distributed, and with so many hollows and ridges that a drive in any part but the fashionable "Corso" of the city is an adventure to be remembered. At first sight of the hills mounting so closely from both sides of the lower town, the difficulty of exploring, or of penetrating to the suburbs, seems appalling. Here it is that Lisbon may be compared at every turn with the San Francisco of other days. ”

“ A beautiful panorama spreads to view at the last bend of the five miles' drive from Payalvo station to Thomar. Below is a verdant plain, fertile in fruit and olive trees as a garden, and in the midst winds a river. To the left, on the hill above, the towers and battlements of an ancient castle show up strongly against the blue. The white houses of the town are at the foot of the hill. ”

“ Just as the famous cable-cars skimmed gaily up and down Nob Hill, and other famous hills of the Californian Paris, so the electric cars of Lisbon bring all parts of the city into touch with the centre and one another. The elaborate system of lines and wires spreading web-like in all directions seems to control the capital. How the Lisbon citizen contrived to exist before it was organized one is puzzled to imagine. ”

“ Two cities in Portugal dominate the whole country—Lisbon and Oporto. They are the power houses from which emanates the movement carrying life and activity into the provinces. Both of them are seaports, but Lisbon is the seat of government, and possesses the superior advantage of offering navigation one of the finest natural havens of the world, an important bourne of the great Ocean in touch with the seas of the north and the Mediterranean. ”

“ Among the many appreciators of the Church's invaluable relics one notes groups of the humbler classes of city and suburb, the women with the gay, spotless handkerchiefs tied round their heads, the men in their broad-brimmed sombreros of felt, their awed, absorbed faces all showing the keenest interest in objects that still retain for them the original halo of sanctity. ”

“ Avenues of trees, flowering shrubs, palm trees, and many varieties of sub-tropical plants, with fountains, rockeries, kiosks, flower beds, decorate the continuous gardens which separate the three thoroughfares of the boulevard. For a mile and a half these extend constituting a fascinating promenade even in winter-time, for the exotics with their plumed crests, graceful fronds, or barbed spears, supply the verdure, and the deep blue and sunlight of cloudless skies the atmosphere of summer. ”

“ The fashion of colouring the buildings in distinct hues, and of facing part of and sometimes the whole of many houses with porcelain tiles adds to the variety of hues, and intensifies the lustre of the sunlight glittering upon the massed congeries of hill and vale.
The vast block of buildings opposite the point of view is the noted Hospital of S. José, an institution founded in the fifteenth century, and removed to this edifice after the expulsion of the Jesuits who owned it, and after the original infirmary, Todos os Santos, had been demolished by the earthquake. ”

“ As allusion to the great Pombal and his period is constantly being made, whether one passes through Lisbon superficially or lingers to inquire into the history of things, interest is heightened by acquiring a certain knowledge of facts connected with the man and the terrible event.
Undoubtedly the earthquake of 1755 was the greatest catastrophe that Lisbon had experienced, not because it was more terrible than the earlier one of 1531, but because, say certain politicians, the capital was temporarily the most opulent and rich in all Europe. ”

“ When one sees sumptuous new buildings in the town, the result of a greater outlay than would be incurred by a speedier restoration of this venerable relic, one wonders at these evidences of a constructive enterprise that yet fails in appreciative guardianship of its most ancient Cathedral. Like some poor, scarred, suffering Cyclops, the old Sé looks dumbly over the town and the broad bay, a pathetic image of the tragedy of neglected age and a perverse fate. It is a spectacle to draw tears to the eyes. ”